Aileron

Well, I am currently learning C++, but I have no clue how to impliment a program into a bot.

Yes, well the BIG problem with CDs is how they are marketed. In a typical album, there is one maybe two good songs and around ten or so mediocre songs. They would be a much better value if all of the songs were hit ones. That sounds a lot harder than it is. In actuality, all they would have to do have the lesser songs played on MTV and the radio more.

Kyoto isn't really that good for the whole country, not just oil interests. Yeah, I did some research into the Tokamak reactor. They do have promise, although the claim that they reached break even is doubted. Still, something like that will PROBABLY work. The only problem that the plant would have to be huge. It would get a much higher proportion of power back. However, having one power plant per continent leads to distribution problems.

I really don't think you need to worry about that. Davis already screwed you over.

What do you mean cheer up? I couldn't be happier with what is happening there. They are replacing Davis, a person who is too incompetant to run a taco stand, with someone who isn't a career politician. Historically, the only three presidents held in high regard who were career politicians were Lincoln and the two Roosevelts, and Theodore Roosevelt got half of his reputation for service in the Spanish American War. Most of the others got reputation for military service such as Washington, Jackson, and Eisenhower. However, other popular ones were Kennedy and Reagon, the former coming out of nowhere and the later from acting. I'm using presidents because I really do not know that much of politicans in general. Point being, most good politicians aren't career politicians.

Maybe the "brick and mortar" stores are getting hurt, but the recording industry, as a whole, will remain strong (the recording industry includes the producers, engineers, editors, agents, etc. all of whom remain essential ingredients to a well produced album. I meant more along the lines of the "brick and mortar" stores. A poor use of words on my part. Sorry. You know, that shows the exact problem with CDs. From all of the examples above, it is clear that those who sell DVDs made a clear effort to COMPETE with downloadables. Thus, they don't have a problem. CDs, however, do not have things like that. They could have put special features into the CDs, but they didn't. They could have made the quality of manufactured CDs far exceed that of downloaded copies. Yes, it is not a direct comparison, but there is plenty they could have done to make a bought CD a better value than a homemade copy downloaded online. Thus, I really don't pity those who make CDs.

Actually, I doubt Bush is all that into oil. First off, it is clear that the future source of fuel lies elseware. Secondly, while he is an ex-oil tycoon, note that he is an EX-oil tycoon. He left that business because he didn't like it for some reason. Third of all, while his "friends" are still in the business, due to the way corperate structures are set up, the executives can survive the collapse of their business will almost no impact on their careers. If he really did want to cater to these people so much, he would be doing them a favor by killing the oil industry and builind hydrogen fuels. All the oil tycoons would have to do is shake the prevebial dust off of their shoes and become hydrogen fuel tycoons. They would be no less rich than before and would also be in a growing instead of dying industry. Anyways, thats another topic, one of which I am truly tired of. Ok, back on topic. I've never heard of these Tokamak reactors. I would like to know what they are, they sound cool. It seems that there are two basic types of power plants - experimental and actual. Of the experimental ones, I prefer fusion. I only do this because if a fusion plant can be implemented, there will be no energy crisis and no ecological debate. If Fusion power was created tomorrow, this whole topic would be spam the day after. Because fusion doesn't give off radiation, it would be safe for everything from power plants to cars and wouldn't pollute the environment at all. It also would produce such a large amount of power from such a small amount of such an inexpensive fuel (hydrogen), that it would be practically an indefinite source of power. The only problem would be where we would store all the Helium we would be producing, which pales in comparison to our current environmental concerns.

Well, it is clear Schwarzenegger is going to win. The only other candidate who has gotten his name out is Coleman, and he isn't really respected. The California election isn't all that much of a joke. First off, it is a recall election. The purpose of it is more along the lines of getting Davis out then anyone in. Secondly, while it has over a hundred candidates, it only has about two or three LIKELY candidates. Almost all elections start with about that many hopefulls, the only difference is that primaries eliminate all but two in most situations. The only difference between this one and all other elections is that the primaries have been eliminated so they can get Davis out faster. As for Schwarzenegger's undefined economic policy, I don't criticise it. Since he is a front runner, if nobody defines a policy, he will win. If he defines a policy first, the other candidates can plan their policies to specifically defeat his. If the other candidates do so first, he can do likewise. If he doesn't do it and no one else does, he wins. If he does it first, he loses. If he does it last, he wins. Thus, he is making the correct move by waiting for everyone else to define a policy. However, no matter what, all candidates will define SOMETHING at the last minute. That way, at election time, they will not look like they are unprepared. I'm defining "last minute" as the time when it is early enough that his policies can be effectively advertised to populace in time for the election, but too late for a counter policy to be created and advertised before the deadline.

Well, it will kill the recording industry, although it is the future of the music industry as a whole. The recording industry is dying. They did not consider online file sharing to be compe!@#$%^&*ion because it was illegal. That was a mistake because illegal actions still exist. Because of that mistake, their industry will fall. All it takes is for a site like mp3.com to offer music downloading in a legal fashion. However, the music EXECUTIVES are making the right decision. They are suing consumers for short term profit at the expense of the long term good of their company. Then, they can leave the company just before it collapses. -*BAD WORD*-o again Enron.

We have a lot more volume under mountains to store nuclear waste than area to build solar power plants when you factor in the size of a solar power plant verses the size of nuclear waste.

So, you think it already has been lost. Well, you are mostly correct in terms of legal ownership, and in the fact that animals and ecosystems do not have rights. However, there is a desire among humans to preserve at least a part of the natural world for its own sake. I see your point in that radiation and pollution hurts people, not just ecosystems. However, like animals, people need room too. Humans have a psycological need for territory as well as exploration. If this is not fulfilled, the effects can be just as dangerous as physical problems. I'm no expert, but this is probably the source of many inner city problems. I could prove it, but I'll stay on topic. Thus, we need to preserve land for humans as well. What I was saying is that radiactive waste depletes itself of time. We don't need to store it "forever"; we need to store it until it decays. However, the mine has the capabilities of storing radioactive materials for as long as we need it to. The site lasts forever, the materials don't. Put it this way. Most radiation cannot penetrate a piece of paper. There is no way in heck that any of these particles could p!@#$%^&* through a denser and more importantly thicker layer of rock. However, the true threat is that fragments of materials get into air or water and then inhaled or swallowed. First off, it can't leak into the water supply from the site, because water flows downhill and this is below the water table. It can't get into the air because it is sealed (several times), put inside airlocks, and reverse pressurized. Basically, the biggest thing preventing leaks from this site is that all forces such as gravity and pressure will push it back in.

I bet you sweep the dirt on your floor under your rug Dumping tons of hazardous waste into a hole in a mountain is not a clean disposal solution - it's simply the best they can do with the material they've created. ...and if you actually think the material stored there will be there forever ("permanently") then you are dreaming Actually, it doesn't have to last forever as you put it. It only has to last a few hundred years. More importantly, radioactive materials come from deep underground. If the thickness of the ground at its thinest point is strong enough to contain natural sources of raditaion for thousands if not millions of years, why is it so implausible that deep underground can contain similar sources of radiation at one if its thickest points for only a few hundred? Basically, we got the stuff from deep underground. All we are really doing is putting it back where we got it. This isn't sweeping dirt under a rug, this is dumping dirt outside with other dirt. I said it once already... humans have claimed every last inch of known land on this earth as their own AND in case you missed it, most humans care nothing about most animals until THEY ARE HUNGRY - and then they don't care whether or not the animals they're eating lived in nice places So, you are saying we should merely give up trying to protect the environment? All I'm saying is that we can probably rule that scenario out as a possibility because it would take a miracle to happen. If this was subspace, it would be like one player attacking a base that has a few hundred defenders. Not only that, but that player has to get ALL the flags, and all of the flags are spread in multiple locations throughout the base. On top of that, the bot would display a macro every time a flag was picked up (safety systems themselves are monitored). And to be even more realistic, guns aren't allowed on power plants, so one can assume that the intruder will only have stealth OR a weapon, and if he snuck one in, it wouldn't be on par with the ones the guards are carrying. On top of all that, there would be a mod on the defending team that could and would be willing to flagreset (shut down the reactor) at any time (and yes, nuclear reactors CAN be shutdown in a few seconds). I mean, ->I:p Yes, it could happen. I only consider it impossible because it is more probable that the universe collapses on itself spontaniously.

Actually, the disposal problem IS being solved soon. The Federal Governmnet is considering building a disposal site in Utah or Nevada in an old salt mine below the water table. It is big enough that it could store material permanently. As for transport, no enriched Uranium is on unguarded freight trains. It would only be on mere trains if in hasn't been enriched yet, and if it hasn't, it really isn't nuclear fuel yet. It wouldn't be worth stealing in such a state, because no terrorist organization has or likely will ever have capabilities of enriching Uranium. It isn't full proof, but it is far easier to get ahold of some rogue bomb left over from the Soviet Union. However, my point about the failsafes was not weather the employee knew how to disable them, but rather that he/she would be capable of running around the plant and damaging each one without notice. Security around these places is tight, and it is likely that no one person would have that kind of access to the entire facility. Also, every time he turns off one, a light turns on in the control room. The first one may go unoticed, but by the third or fourth, everyone in the plant will know what he is doing, and he will still have five or six more systems to disable. Point being, it takes a lot more than "one disgruntled employee" to take out a whole power plant, nuclear or otherwise. As for your main point, more nuclear plants do increase the odds of disaster. However, with every other type of power plant, the consequences do not have a chance of happening, they DO happen. If fossil fuel plant is built, it WILL produce pollution. If a solar or wind plant is built, there WILL be massive habitat loss. Nuclear power is the only type that has no major environmental consequences under normal cir-*BAD WORD*-stances.

Well, "scaling down" isn't a very good description. In terms of the US, the term would be "complete halt". I don't know about the situation in Canada. Point being however, that nuclear power is a lot less dangerous than its reputation. You do have a point with the other countries, but that is a seperate issue. As for the terrorism idea, I really do not know how it started. I guess with the suggestion that the plane that crashed in western Pennsylvania was aimed for a nuclear plant. However, the concept just doesn't fly. Nuclear power plants are hardened targets defended by armed guards. Terrorists don't attack such things. If given a choice between an army base and an emb!@#$%^&*y, they would choose the emb!@#$%^&*y. Why? Because terrorists are simply too cowardly to attack anything that has people who will shoot back at them and are too weak to attack anything that has exterior walls made of something stronger than glass Want proof? During the flight of the above mentioned plane, it passed over about six or seven nuclear plants, including the infamous Three Mile Island. While it is unlikely that the terrorists were in charge for the whole flight, it is likely they had an opportunity to crash into at least one. Besides even if they did, the containment building of TMI was designed to withstand a direct hit from an airplane with no damage to the building. I don't know if this is standard, but I assume it is. Admitingly, the plane wasn't a 747, but a made up size between it and a regular jet. However, the jumbo jet would barely overcome the safety factors of the outer well, and definitely would not breach the reactor vessel. As for sabatage, first off there probably won't be many disgruntled employees. Nuclear engineers make a very high salery, highest of all engineers right out of college. Secondly, it order to successfully pull it off, they would need to disengage a few dozen safety systems, and it would be unlikely they would have security access to all of them. Long story short, nuclear plants have so much security that terrorsts are probably making plans elseware.

That is the correct opinion. The only point I disagree with you is that I think that the large amount of habitat destroyed by wind and solar plants hurts the environment more than nuclear meltdown, when you factor in the actuall odds of a nuclear meltdown occuring. There was one nuclear leak from a power plant in history, Chernobyl. Three Mile Island was a close call, but no radiation escaped the plant. So basically, the ONLY time nuclear material ever escaped was in the 60s where nuclear science wasn't as advanced and in a country where things such as safety systems were routinely skimped on. Not only that, but they were running experiments on a full size reactor. What they were most likely doing was seing how much plutonium the reactor could make before it went awall. Basically, they were testing the limits. Chernobyl won't happen again. We don't need large amounts of plutonium anymore because it is only used in weapons and practically all countries are disarming their nuclear arsenals. Even if we weren't, we wouldn't want to resort to such desperate tactics to build them. That is !@#$%^&*uming, of course, that the process works, which it doesn't. Basically, the chances of nuclear plants having a meltdown at this time is almost nothing.

Good point, but I didn't start the matrix discussion, madhaha did. As for staff, a good staff requires self-analysis. The owner must analyze him/herself and find out what his/her strengths and weaknesses are. Then, he/she must hire people that have strengths where the owner is failing. Basically, if the owner is Superman, the staff should be people who are powered up by kryptonite.

The problem with dumping the material on the moon is that it resembles a lot of other policies of dumping garbage in the ocean or in the country side. It just leaves the possibility that we will have to deal with it later. Besides, space travel is simply too expensive to be spent on waste products. (Actually, the second reason is better than the first, but...) I like the international storage site that the US is building. The only problem with it is that either we will get screwed by storing everyone else's waste, or everyone else will get ticked off at our monopoly. It really would just be easier to build our own site and let foreign countries deal with their own waste.

I only went there because I wasn't as laggy there. And for the matrix zone, my idea has three freqs: humans, agents, and smiths. The human freq obviously contains all the human ships, and ONE person to be the "chosen one", who would basically be a capital ship. As for the agents, there are regular and ghost agents. The regulars would be more powerfull and be the only ship that could attach to others. The ghost agents would respawn in the same spot a few seconds after they were killed. You could also have an Ex-Agent Smith freq, which would basically be a zombie freq. (Everyone killed would be set in the agent smith ship and be placed on the freq) I really don't know how the gameplay would occur, but as I said, I really haven't thought about it.

That is just simply incorrect. There ARE such things as parks, wildlife preserves, game lands, wetlands, and land that simply hasn't been developed yet. The ecosystem is stronger and larger than environmentalists would have you believe. Actually, it would be better. Nuclear plants have a MUCH better power output to land consumption ratio. Nuclear Plants consume roughly half the land area of a solar plant, but produce roughly 50 times the power. The only reason solar survives is because of the HOPE that it might become more efficient with research. In my opinion, Cold-Fusion holds the same odds of success, but could be so powerfull as to make our fission ones look like a joke. Don't get me wrong, solar has it's uses. Calculators and highway call boxes are very practical uses of solar power. However, I really don't think that solar could be the power workhorse that we need.

Not necessarilly. Australia and probably other countries, might be able to produce crops for biofuels more cheaply than the US. Subsidies or imports might still happen. I don't think so. Soil takes so long to form that it is essentially non-renewable. Yes...improved land management can reduce the problem of soil loss, but we still need to deal with fertilisers (which are often derived from non-renewable sources - including petrochemicals) and pesticides. And, if we are going to produce the same amount of food AND then fuel as well, the world will need to dramatically increase the area of land under production. This would have massive implications. I'm not dismissing your arguments entirely. Biofuels are part of the suite of fuels that we can use to reduce reliance on fossil fuels, but at the current rate of energy use I think it is not feasible. Monte Yeah, both have their advantages and disadvantages. It is obvious that considering that the infrastructure for oil is already built, it is just plain easier to wait for a more advanced solution. Nintendo: be nice Akai: Nintendo is right, we have discussed the problems with wind, hydroelectric, and solar. Simply put, those sources require huge amounts of land to function. Basically, you are subs!@#$%^&*uting air pollution with destruction of ecosystems. In order to build a solar or wind plant, you need a huge amount of open space. This is usually acceptable if the space is a desert or tundra with little or no life on it. However, to impliment solar or wind EVERYWHERE, you would have to build plants EVERYWHERE. Thus, you would have to clear-cut forests and drain wetlands. As for hydroelectric, we have already built a dam at every viable location. Besides, dams aren't good for the environment either. Basically, those (and energy conservation) are the things we should try first in places where it is viable. After we exhausted those supplies, we will need something else.

Actually, mad, your idea actually helps the zone population. Most of my rules were sarcastic. Actually, to put point to my pointless post, that does show how much existing population does to draw new members. SWR is clearly doing just about everything wrong and is still a major zone merely because it is populated in the first place. I have an idea about a matrix based zone in terms of map style and gameplay, but I don't have the time to impliment it. Unlike some owners, I won't start a zone if I don't have the knowledge and time to maintain it.

True, the RIAA's motives are selfish. However, that does not in and of itself make it moral from an ethical standpoint. Their selfish interest could coincidentally agree with morality. They are also rich, but that doesn't do it either. Being rich in and of itself is not wrong. Thus, the "rich greedy corporation" arguement doesn't fly. They are rich. They are greedy. They are most likely raising the legal stir to stifle compe!@#$%^&*ion. However, that doesn't mean that their arguements are unsound. Face it, file sharing does not allow the individual who created the piece to recieve the payment he/she requests and (if your are not a communist) deserves. Whether the message is being sung by a sinner or a saint holds no consequence. Thus, file sharing is wrong, unless there is a way to do it with the permission of the person who wrote it. Basically, the compromise between economics (which clearly says that CDs have to go) and ethics is that someone should make a website were you could download songs off of them (most likely, but not necessarily, for a price), and they would pay the copywrite laws. This is essentially what they do over the radio.

I have some more advice. 1) Don't create your own idea. It is better to steal ideas off of another successfull zone so as to steal their player base. 2) Cycle your staff. Keep all staffers around for a few months, and then replace them with n00bs. When they stay around for too long, staffers will request that you give them mutual respect, which apparently undermines your authority as owner. 3) Limit your events, they drain members from the pub arena. I don't know why, but this is a bad thing. 4) Give all players ability to spec people for lag. Spec powers shouldn't be reserved for staff who have an obligation to be responsable, rather they should be given to everyone because if you are following rule #2 all your staff are either n00bs or people you will want to cycle out. 5) Change your settings around randomly every few months. That way, your zone won't develop a core of leet players. While these people would be the most loyal, it is apparently better to completely eliminate the leet in favor of transients who will leave your zone in a heartbeat. 6) Never take suggestions from anyone else. Remember that it is YOUR zone and the YOU are owner. If you start taking suggestions, the people you take them from will actually start thinking that they have a say in how your zone is developed. This under any cir-*BAD WORD*-stances must not happen. 7) Also, if you have an idea, it is best to impliment it before you notify anybody and that you ignore any criticism from anyone who doesn't like your idea. The reasons are the same as for #6. These rules are implimented by SR of Star Wars Realm. If you follow these rules, your zone will be as successfull as SWR. I apologize for the flame/spamfest in an otherwise helpfull topic, but I needed to let off steam for being made a victim of 2, 4, and 6.

True, but there are advantages as well. First off, oil is a resource we have to import, while farm products is something in which we don't. Secondly, switching to biofuels would eliminate the need for the subsidies we give to farmers. Finally, land is (atleast moreso than oil) a renewable resource. True, if you plant corn in a field for twenty years in a row, it will become crud. However, wise land management policies increase the longetivity of the land. It won't last forever, but it will last longer than an oil reserve. However, this is vehicular energy, which is a seperate issue. You couldn't put together a power grid on either alcohol or oil (judging by the results of this poll).

Well, sharing music should be illegal unless there is a means that one can find a way to not violate copywrite laws. However, this IS an indication for the music industry to wake up. Whether it is legal or illegal, file sharing IS compe!@#$%^&*ion from an economic standpoint. They could sue the Napsters and Kazaas all day long, but until they make their products able to compete with these sources, they will never rid themselves of the problem.